Fletcher in the News

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's previously powerful uncle has been executed as a traitor, the country's state-run news service said Thursday.

According to KCNA, the uncle, Jang Song Thaek, was guilty of "attempting to overthrow the state by all sorts of intrigues and despicable methods with a wild ambition to grab the supreme power of our party and state."

On Monday, the isolated regime announced that Jang had been dismissed from his vaunted official post for a string of criminal acts, including corruption, womanizing and drug-taking. …

… Sung-Youn Lee (sic), a Korean studies professor at Tufts University, said the escalation of brutality is not a threat to the U.S. but to those close to Jang.

"I don’t expect him to launch a war or anything. He’s not suicidal,” he said. "What I do expect to see is hundreds of others who were close to Jang rounded up and summarily executed or thrown into gulags."